After the calm of Lamu, back to the hustle of Nairobi, and time to rejoin the truck for a two week jaunt into Uganda. This time we were joined by 15 Aussies and a South African couple, along with Doris' crew of Jacques and Celia. The first night was spent at a very nice campsite in Elderat, near the Kenyan-Ugandan border. From there it was meant to be a simple job of picking some stuff up in town, before hitting the border. Alas nothing in Africa is that simple.
Trucks have very large blind-spots behind them, so quit why a lady decided to park bumper-to-bumper behind the truck is a mystery. Anyway, when Jacques reversed into her, her bonnet folded up like paper. It is amazing how quickly an angry mob can form, especially when the woman is saying that we deliberately reversed into her, 'cos she is black. After a lengthy stand-off, the police arrived, and decided that we were responsible, so it was off to the garage to thrash out the bill. After further lengthy negotiations, we escaped $250 down – it would have been cheaper to have bribed the copper.
The leg to the border is rough – the heavy trucks on the Nairobi-Kampala run have done their bit to destroy a poorly maintained road. These same trucks form a mile long queue at the border, and can take a few days to cross it. Fortunately for us, we do not count as a truck for the purposes of border formalities, so we were through in an hour, and on to the 32nd, and final, country of our trip.
The town of Jinja lies where the White Nile pours out of Lake Victoria, to start its 4000 mile journey to the Mediterranean. The flow is dam controlled, and below the dam is reputed to be some of the best grade 5 rapids in the world. We had three nights in Jinja, so plenty of time to get wet.
Twelve of us fancied rafting, so we were split into two boats. Unfortunately a scout troop form Gloucestershire and Norwegian gymnastic squad also fancied it, so there were 13 boats on the rather crowded river. Grade 5 rapids are not to be messed with, so the first half-hour is spend practising safety procedures such as holding on to the safety rope if the raft flips, and what to do if you end up underneath it. Fully prepared, we paddled off to face the Nile.
The first few rapids were exhilarating, but no more so that those on the Zambezi – then we hit Silverback. The waves that hit you are huge, and at one point I was out of the boat clinging on the rope, waiting for the inevitable capsize. Somehow we stayed upright, minus Rhiannon, who was being swept down the fast moving rapid, and not looking too happy about it . She was picked up by the safety kayak, and returned to the raft, somewhat shaken.
Silverback is the sit of a new hydroelectric dam under construction – when completed it will wash out Silverback and all the rapids upstream of it. There are a total of 8 rapids before lunch, which are done in quick succession. However, after lunch the rapids are spaced apart by flat pools, each several km long, forcing you to do some rather tiring paddling. Unfortunately (for me at least) we failed to flip on any of the 12 rapids, but did pick up a lot of the carnage from the other rafts.
The next day I decided that the best thing for me to do was go rafting again. Kirsten meanwhile decided to be worthy and went to paint a school and meet some local kids with Soft Power, a community project. She followed this up with an afternoon horse ride along the banks of the Nile and through remote villages with no road access. The second day's rafting was better in the sense that we flipped three times. On the first I ended up under the raft, and in my effort to free myself, let go of the rope and was swept into the rapids. After what seemed like a very long time trying to catch breaths between being hit by huge waves, I was glad to be picked up by the kayak. On the next two flips I was far more Zen. Kirsten returned from her day covered in paint but very happy to have managed to trot successfully for the first time.
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